Harassmap

The movement and the success of the tracking of harassment of women is an amazing tool. The statistics on harassment were overwhelming. It brought to mind the way in which bystanders do not engage to stop public behaviors that are unacceptable. The 75 percent of individuals noted as not coming to the aid of those women being harassed is very startling. It reminded me of the case in which a woman cried for help in New York City during a rape and although, many heard her cries for help not one person intervened, called the police or reached out to help the victim. The use of the app to call out those that engage in such deplorable behavior is an effective tool in the fight against harassment of women. The ability of the app to track previous incidents and locations of incidents will hopefully detour those from further deplorable behavior. The problem with any type of movement is apathy. The cost to women and society as a whole with this type of behavior is also noteworthy. What message as a society do we send to our future youth if we allow these behaviors to go unchecked. We are condoning it if we do nothing to stop it. The movement and its ability to achieve funding through human rights organizations points to the need to stop treating women as property and objects. If this were a global program would it help to detour the sickness of human trafficking of women? It would appear that if women were able to share their stories it might work as prevention. I watched a program created by a serial rapist from prison that gave women insight as to how avoid situations in which they are more vulnerable to rape, sexual harassment and attacks. I shared this information with my two daughters and it has been very helpful. The key is information and the movement is centered on this approach, which is a very effective tool. The places, people and situations to avoid are central to the success of any determent of unwanted behaviors towards women. More importantly, making the perpetrators of sexual harassment aware that they are being watched and that there are consequences to their inappropriate activities is key to achieving positive change in the area of women’s rights. Society as a whole to call out this behavior on the streets, in the workplace and in the media…#Harassmap.

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2 thoughts on “Harassmap”

I remember reading about the case you mentioned some time ago, I don’t know why people would just walk away from cries for help, It’s hard to pinpoint whether it is ignorance or ego that caused people to ignore the call for help. I think most people tend to have the mindset that is “someone else will come to help, so I don’t have to,” this is exactly the normalized behavior we need to eradicate with campaigns such as HarassMap.

What I like about the HarassMap platform especially is the the fact that it creates power in victims where it once didn’t or couldn’t exist (not without the technology at our fingertips today). I was also terrified and disgusted at the actual stats of sexual abuse in Egypt. To think that 99% of women are abused and that most of them don’t even feel safe reporting to authorities is so heartbreaking. the fact is that 99% of women being abused is a symptom of unchecked aggression. The attitudes and respect toward women within Egyptian culture has been allowed to decay so much because there has been no way for them to fight back or defend themselves. They live in a society that is so skewed to the benefit of man, so patriarchal that even defending their own human rights is out of the question. And this is why I love HarassMap. Because just at the darkest hour a new hope was introduced in where else but the digital realm. As so many movements before it, HarassMap was able to inspire and unite all different types of people against the abuse of women. In the new digital realm they found the strength to take a stand.